Gaming Ultra Budget Gaming PC Guide

So I was chatting around with some friends the other day, when the discussion shifted to how one of them had bought so many games on the last Steam sale, however they did not have the proper PC to play most of them - and they were not too keen on saving too much to buy one either.

So I went ahead and asked them if they have any specific graphical quality demands from their games, to which they responded: "As long as it's playable, it's fine."

In that spirit, I took the time of assembling a small parts list for an ultra budget gaming PC, that can simply run at least 95% of current games in the market, at least at the lowest settings, at a playable framerate (minimum 30 frames per second).

So, considering the above requirements, here is the parts list I put together:

Okay, most of us are so used to seeing all those Core i5s and i7s and GTX 1070s and all that fancy jazz for a "proper gaming PC" that we might be a little surprised/astonished/disgusted at the parts in the above build.

It is true that, while these parts will not "kill" most games (i.e. we will most probably not get maxed out graphics at 60fps or above for demanding titles), for people who are looking for a budget PC and already possess some basic components (monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers), this build is one of the most attractive choices.

Time to explain the parts choices though, so let's get down to it.

► CPU First and foremost, I shall explain the choice of CPU: the i3 6100. This is the entry level model in the 6th generation Skylake family, part of which is also the sought-after i5 6600K and the enthusiast i7 6700K CPU.
The i3 6100 has two physical enabled cores, augmented by Intel's Hyper-Threading technology, thus allowing for 4 threads overall and it operates at a base clock of 3.7GHz.
It offers excellent single-core performance, and in gaming specifically the performance difference between this CPU and an i5 6600K, in games with few physics calculations, is minimal (e.g. Grand Theft Auto V, The Witcher 3) and is usually no more than 5%.
Considering the above, and the price of ~$100, the i3 6100 makes for an excellent CPU choice for tackling games, although it may not be as effective in tasks like archive compression and video encoding (it still performs adequately, though).

In case of extreme budget limits, you could replace the i3 6100 with Pentium G4400. It costs a meager ~$60, and in gaming, it offers nearly identical performance to the i3, and terrifyingly similar performance to even an i5 6600K, in games that do not demand extreme calculations (e.g. physics), such as The Witcher 3 or Dark Souls 3.
Do note that one downside to this otherwise unbelievable gaming processor, is the drastically reduced performance in tasks such as archive compression, video editing, and other similar tasks, when compared to the multicore i5 and i7 processors.

Okay. We are talking about budget PCs here, and we have not even mentioned AMD processors. To be honest, and while I sincerely respect AMDs products, it has just not been going that well for them. For the same money, we would get a quite power-consuming, and easily heating CPU, that would possibly require overclocking and an aftermarket cooler for it to catch up with the i3's performance.
A friend of mine has a similar setup to this one with an AMD CPU (an overclocked AMD FX 6350), but he already says he is choking it in overclocking to perform well and jokes about having to use a room fan to cool it in the summer. I'm not too much of a fan of this, especially when it comes to recommending PC parts to beginners.
If you absolutely want to get an AMD processor though, I recommend you wait until Ryzen CPUs come out in a few weeks, as of writing this thread.
Even with Ryzen though, it would be wise to wait for some benchmarks, to make sure it's not all a blown out marketing tactic by AMD.

► MOTHERBOARD The motherboard is nothing specific, really. Just the absolute barebone board that supports the CPU and GPU, with no additional features and trinkets (e.g. "enhanced sound" or features that enable extreme overclocking). In other words, it just works, and that is good enough. Nothing more, nothing less.

► RAM Modern games suchas Battlefield 1 have come to require at least 16GB of memory in their specifications. This holds true, but mostly for higher quality settings. From experience, few games will even touch 5 or 6 gigabytes, and when they do, only momentarily (due to a specific scene in a game). Considering this, 8GB of RAM is cheap enough, and carries incredible performance/value ratio, which means you'll get a pretty damn good bang for your buck from buying this part.

► HDD Storage in the past few years, has been becoming exponentially larger, and cheaper, making 4TB hard drives recently somewhat affordable (well, until the recent Taiwan HDD crisis due to flooding, which destroyed a great stock of HDDs, skyrocketing their price). How much storage you actually need is really up to each user. On average, a few games, and some files such as music and movies (not talking about dozens of games of course, or a myriad of movie files) should cram together pretty well in 1TB of storage. This HDD by Western Digital offers 1TB of storage at a fantastic price of $50, with no catches whatsoever (no "green" or "eco" mode, or any trinkets like that). It's a pure 1TB of value. Addionally, SSDs do not increase performance in gaming, other than reduced loading times for games/apps, however this is obviously not a priority, when for the same ~$50 you can barely get 120GB of SSD storage, which is rather insufficient for even the least demanding of users.

► GPU The GPU is the lifeblood, the very core of a gaming PC. While other components such as the CPU and RAM also play quite an important role, a weaker GPU will have a much greater impact on performance than a weaker CPU or less RAM.
The RX 480 has 4GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM, a base clock of 1120MHz and a boost clock of 1266MHz, utilizing 2304 stream processors, and uses the 14nm fabrication node, for great power efficiency and improved heat output.
It is ideal for 1080p gaming, tackling certain games even at the maximum settings at 60fps, and also carries great performance/value ratio, proven countless times by a myriad of benchmarks all around the web.
I did not opt for cheaper GPUs, such as the RX 470 / GTX 1050Ti or the RX 460 / GTX 1050, because while these models are cheaper, they are also disproportionally less powerful, and are targetted towards specific games/genres, such as MOBAs for the RX 460, and mediocre 1080p performance for the RX 470.
I did not choose the 8GB version of the RX 480, because, while games are indeed more demanding nowadays for VRAM, there is absolutely no way a single game can take up more than 4GB, definitely not when running at 1080p, and definitely not when it's not a VR game. At best, only a few games with extremely demanding texture settings will push the 4GB threshold, which is the reason for this choice.

Regarding the GTX 1050Ti, I already dismissed it as a candidate, for the same reasons as the RX 470.
As for the GTX 1060, I really can't find any extremely serious reason why not to choose it, but I'll try to convince you anyway: First of all, we shall dismiss the 6GB version of the GTX 1060, for the same reason we dismissed the 8GB version of the RX 480. Now, for the GTX 1060 3GB... The GTX 1060 3GB offers only slightly better performance than the RX 480 4GB, and usually comes at a quite greater price, although some $180 models came up recently. Additionally, the 3GB of VRAM, is perhaps a little concerning. I did say games are not that demanding of VRAM at 1080p, but let's not start reducing our standards. 3GB vs 4GB might not seem much, but sometimes... it can be. Certain games can touch even the 2.5GB mark on higher settings, and that is concerning, especially if you are running other VRAM demanding tasks in the background (e.g. a Full HD YouTube music video). It is better to have some leeway, than choking the card when you try to perform a demanding task, on top of playing a game.That still doesn't fully rule out the GTX 1060 3GB as a potential candidate, though. For example, it offers a bit better heat output than the RX 480, as tradition has it with nVidia cards.
The RX 480 is only my personal choice. If you do wish to get a GTX 1060, go ahead. It won't make much of a difference, and some models are not even $20 more expensive than the RX 480. It's up to you on this one.

► CASE Nothing too extreme, nothing too fancy - and yet it's fully functional, and rather good looking: The NZXT S340. The S340 offers ample working space to fit and cable-manage our components, is slick and sturdy (steel makes up more than 90% of the materials of the chassis) and all of this in overall a very high quality build. Plus, it's only $65. Amazing.

► PSU The most vital part of every computer is the power supply. A bad power supply can, in the worst case, kill the entire system. This is a rare case, of course. But this doesn't mean that an underpowered power supply cannot cause problems, such as freezes or unexpected shutdowns under load. That is why we must pick a power supply that is powerful enough to support all of our components, but at the same time not be overkill or extremely low quality.
That being said, I present you the EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W power supply. 550W, more than enough to house all of our components with ample wattage to spare, absolutely outstanding build quality, 80+ Gold efficiency, 7 year warranty (EVGA offers amazing support), all for $80. Even in budget builds, we must pay attention to which PSU we choose. And this one is well-chosen.

That concludes this parts list analysis for an ultra budget <$600 budget build. Bear in mind that, while I did try to offer clear enough explanations for the parts I chose, as well as alternatives to them, not everyone might agree with me - and that is quite the point. This build is to help people who want in on some gaming, better productivity and increased performance in their computing experience, at a small cost.
If you guys have any opinions about my choices or anything related to this build or budget PC building, do share!

Developer

Really nice guide! But I was able to reduce the price of your build to $500 thanks to the new budget kind: the Pentium G4560. It is a dual core with hyper threading with very similar performance to the i3 6100 but for just $60. I also choose a cheaper case from Cooler Master and a cheaper PSU from Evga (both cheap but good enough for a budget build and from good brands.). I also incluided a B250 motherboard because although Kaby Lake supports the previous generation motherboards (H110, b150, ect...), to make it work you need to make a BIOS update which most people don't know how to do it, but if you know you could save some more cash. PcPartPicker

Really nice guide! But I was able to reduce the price of your build to $500 thanks to the new budget kind: the Pentium G4560. It is a dual core with hyper threading with very similar performance to the i3 6100 but for just $60. I also choose a cheaper case from Cooler Master and a cheaper PSU from Evga (both cheap but good enough for a budget build and from good brands.). I also incluided a B250 motherboard because although Kaby Lake supports the previous generation motherboards (H110, b150, ect...), to make it work you need to make a BIOS update which most people don't know how to do it, but if you know you could save some more cash. PcPartPicker

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Interesting. I did mention the G4400 as an alternative to the i3, but I ended up including the i3 for the additional performance in non-gaming operations (the Pentiums are seriously lacking in those). Not recommending a different Pentium model (I was initially going to recommend the G4620) is indeed due to the BIOS update required to use it on H110/B150 and so on - some of these boards do not even support the upgrade, which would render the CPU useless for them.

As for the case, I am a bit concerned... I have never got my hands on a mini-ATX CM case (I did take a look at it on PCPartPicker and on the official website for it), and to be honest, quality control at such prices is limited, plus the airflow is questionable (with such a case, I'd strongly recommend the GTX 1060, because its heat output is considerably smaller than that of the RX 480)

As for the PSU, I was considering to offer EVGA's bronze-certified 550W model (then I realized there was only a 500W one lol) but I guess the reason I decided for the 550 80+ Gold one, was to be a little more "generous" with the PSU choice. So, I stuck with the EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G3 champion (100% Japanese capacitors, excellent build quality, great efficiency and longevity, as well as a 7 year warranty).

Developer

Interesting. I did mention the G4400 as an alternative to the i3, but I ended up including the i3 for the additional performance in non-gaming operations (the Pentiums are seriously lacking in those). Not recommending a different Pentium model (I was initially going to recommend the G4620) is indeed due to the BIOS update required to use it on H110/B150 and so on - some of these boards do not even support the upgrade, which would render the CPU useless for them.

As for the case, I am a bit concerned... I have never got my hands on a mini-ATX CM case (I did take a look at it on PCPartPicker and on the official website for it), and to be honest, quality control at such prices is limited, plus the airflow is questionable (with such a case, I'd strongly recommend the GTX 1060, because its heat output is considerably smaller than that of the RX 480)

As for the PSU, I was considering to offer EVGA's bronze-certified 550W model (then I realized there was only a 500W one lol) but I guess the reason I decided for the 550 80+ Gold one, was to be a little more "generous" with the PSU choice. So, I stuck with the EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G3 champion (100% Japanese capacitors, excellent build quality, great efficiency and longevity, as well as a 7 year warranty).

The Pentium are just like i3, they are both dual core, there diference is that the pentiums always had hyper-threading disabled. Which made it lose to the i3 every time a program could use more than 2 cores. Quite common these days. But with the new Pentium G4560 having hyper threaded enabled the diference between the pentium and the i3 6100 is only 300MHz. Tl:dr: both have similar performance but the pentium is half the price

About the case. For budget builds, awesome airflow and space aren't worth the extra $ in most cases. Of course if you plan to upgrade later it might be worth in the long run. But the one i picked is from a good brand and good enough for a few years to come.

Lastly, your choice might compensate in the long run, bu again for this build the EVGA 500W one is more than enough and it's from a known brand, so it's very unlucky if it shows any failures in some years.

Your build is great and future proof, but for a budget build future proofing is something that isn't worth the extra $100.

The CPU sticks to the "Budget" part of this. For the "Gaming" part, anything better is disproportionately more expensive relative to the gaming performance gained. There are a LOT of people who falsely claim that many games are CPU-bound (limited by the CPU/CPU is the bottleneck) purely because they notice their GPU isn't taxed and therefore assume it's the CPU. I have real-time monitoring of my CPUs and GPUs and PCI bus whilst playing and the only time I've ever had the CPU be the bottleneck was for single-threaded games (I'm looking at you, Cities XL); other times it's a client/server limitation or other software limitation.

The motherboard. Not much to say here. Yes, flash the BIOS. This is something typically done on any new motherboard anyhow since BIOS updates are pretty frequent early on.

Memory. There is no difference with 2133 vs. 2400 in gaming and this motherboard only supports 2133 anyway. And it's single-channel, so forget maxing RAM performance anyhow. The few dollars saved can go to the video card or optimize the "Budget" part.

Storage: SSD is a must!--Except for "Ultra Budget"; hence, I went with a hybrid drive to keep your game's assets and levels in the 8GB cache to prevent hitching whilst playing. If you opt for an HDD/SSD combo, be sure to use Intel's RST caching for about 20GB of it and get a 200GB+ SSD.

Video: Every ATI I've owned I've regretted, so I stuck with nVidia. This is also a DX12 card with a little more horsepower than the other builds. This is the biggest "Gaming" part.

Case: It has an included illuminated 120mm fan on the front; positive pressure (intake) is important for a "Gaming" PC. It's also cheap but still looks nice.

PSU: All are not created equal. I swear by Enermax. The video card only requires a 400W power supply and going more than a little higher makes the PSU less efficient. If you really want to know about PSUs and see real, legit tests (not this Voltmeter from Radio Shack stuff), go here: JonnyGURU.com - FSP Twins 500W Redundant ATX Review

The CPU sticks to the "Budget" part of this. For the "Gaming" part, anything better is disproportionately more expensive relative to the gaming performance gained. There are a LOT of people who falsely claim that many games are CPU-bound (limited by the CPU/CPU is the bottleneck) purely because they notice their GPU isn't taxed and therefore assume it's the CPU. I have real-time monitoring of my CPUs and GPUs and PCI bus whilst playing and the only time I've ever had the CPU be the bottleneck was for single-threaded games (I'm looking at you, Cities XL); other times it's a client/server limitation or other software limitation.

The motherboard. Not much to say here. Yes, flash the BIOS. This is something typically done on any new motherboard anyhow since BIOS updates are pretty frequent early on.

Memory. There is no difference with 2133 vs. 2400 in gaming and this motherboard only supports 2133 anyway. And it's single-channel, so forget maxing RAM performance anyhow. The few dollars saved can go to the video card or optimize the "Budget" part.

Storage: SSD is a must!--Except for "Ultra Budget"; hence, I went with a hybrid drive to keep your game's assets and levels in the 8GB cache to prevent hitching whilst playing. If you opt for an HDD/SSD combo, be sure to use Intel's RST caching for about 20GB of it and get a 200GB+ SSD.

Video: Every ATI I've owned I've regretted, so I stuck with nVidia. This is also a DX12 card with a little more horsepower than the other builds. This is the biggest "Gaming" part.

Case: It has an included illuminated 120mm fan on the front; positive pressure (intake) is important for a "Gaming" PC. It's also cheap but still looks nice.

PSU: All are not created equal. I swear by Enermax. The video card only requires a 400W power supply and going more than a little higher makes the PSU less efficient. If you really want to know about PSUs and see real, legit tests (not this Voltmeter from Radio Shack stuff), go here: JonnyGURU.com - FSP Twins 500W Redundant ATX Review

$484

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Excellent suggestions. Especially the CPU + GTX 1060 coupling.

Couple of concerns, not sure if they are well-founded, but here goes:

I'm not sure whether there is an BIOS upgrade availalbe for all mobos... some people have been reporting issues with lack of support for it (especially in certain low-end models from non-mainstream brands). Otherwise the G4560 is a great choice.

Now for my main issue: The power supply... I have seen severe issues with extremely cheap power supplies, of questionable build quality. Not to disprove the power supply in question, but demanding systems such as gaming PCs usually do not play well with extreme budget PSUs. Indeed, JonnyGURU.com gives a perfect rating for the EVGA 550W PSU that I recommend above (that's how I ended up choosing it in the first place), in all aspects (and I believe for the 500W Bronze model as well) but there is absolutely no trace of a review or opinion for this specific Enermax model on the Internet... (unless I missed it?)
If this were an office PC, I wouldn't mind trusting it to such a power supply, it would handle it perfectly. But with demanding tasks, like I mentioned, things can get... unpredictable sometimes. Maybe it's my paranoia, but I always like something more generous in terms of a power supply, even for budget builds, due to the vital nature of this specific component.

I'm not sure whether there is an BIOS upgrade availalbe for all mobos... some people have been reporting issues with lack of support for it (especially in certain low-end models from non-mainstream brands). Otherwise the G4560 is a great choice.

Now for my main issue: The power supply... I have seen severe issues with extremely cheap power supplies, of questionable build quality. Not to disprove the power supply in question, but demanding systems such as gaming PCs usually do not play well with extreme budget PSUs. Indeed, JonnyGURU.com gives a perfect rating for the EVGA 550W PSU that I recommend above (that's how I ended up choosing it in the first place), in all aspects (and I believe for the 500W Bronze model as well) but there is absolutely no trace of a review or opinion for this specific Enermax model on the Internet... (unless I missed it?)
If this were an office PC, I wouldn't mind trusting it to such a power supply, it would handle it perfectly. But with demanding tasks, like I mentioned, things can get... unpredictable sometimes. Maybe it's my paranoia, but I always like something more generous in terms of a power supply, even for budget builds, due to the vital nature of this specific component.

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The ASRock page says it is compatible with Kaby-S.

The 1060 only draws 10-13A max; the 450W Enermax can deliver up to 21A on the 12V connector to the card.

Smaller die process and being that this is a budget system makes for very low power consumption; I'd be surprised if this drew more than 300W ever...with a rapidly charging phone attached (15W).

I just read an article where Enermax doesn't make the NAXN line; they outsourced it to CWT, so that may need a pass.

Whoo! Promo on a nice Corsair 400W PSU, bringing the price down to $471. This PSU has a single 12V rail to deliver up to 32A and it's most efficient at 50% load and has a 3-year warranty.

The Corsair PSU is generally much better received online, and for the sake of the "budget" designation of this build, it is generally acceptable, considering a potentially limited lifespan under prolonged gaming sessions throughout its life (as with any power supply of this tier).

The case is also well choked-down for better pricing, though regarding storage, I really do not see the performance benefit of a hybrid drive for a budget build, except for the loading times, so a traditional HDD could bring the price down even more.

I really do not see the performance benefit of a hybrid drive for a budget build, except for the loading times, so a traditional HDD could bring the price down even more.

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It is a $39 difference, bringing it to $433 with a questionable gain; I was on the fence with this one. I've never used a hybrid drive (but I have used Intel's RST caching with an SSD), so I can only speak by analogous experience. Personally, I hate using a platter-drive-only PC; it feels like running in quicksand after using an SSD for any amount of time.

The best route to take, then, would be to go platter-only and, if an upgrade is really wanted later, an SSD w/RST caching could be added--like when the next Windows-upgrade-in-place-as-a-service hits and borks your machine and "technical" support tells you to reset/refresh/whatever-they-call-one-click-reformat-reinstall and you have to rebuild anyway.

Additionally, one could swap the $200 video card for the $150 ones mentioned to get to $383.

I would just buy a second hand system if on tight budget! You get a really good build for ~$500... For example I could get a z97 mobo with an i7 4790k+Noctua NH-D15, 16GB DDR3, GTX 970, SSD, HDD, HQ psu and a nice case for $500-600. That would be my choice!!

I would just buy a second hand system if on tight budget! You get a really good build for ~$500... For example I could get a z97 mobo with an i7 4790k+Noctua NH-D15, 16GB DDR3, GTX 970, SSD, HDD, HQ psu and a nice case for $500-600. That would be my choice!!

All prices to the left are what the seller wants. In some cases they get more but usually they get less. Even though it´s in Swedish you still understand what components that are for sale. Something like the ones listed above would be my choice!

And as soon "Ryzen" is released i guess i can get similar to those above for $100 less. People here in Sweden is crazy about new technology and often just wants to sell the old stuff fast...

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